Chương 25: Digging Ditch

Day 8, Ebril 17 (Thursday) I woke up in my tractor, just as I had every day for over a week now. I still felt fine, but I absolutely had to figure something out so I wouldn't ruin my seat. I seriously doubted I'd find the molded foam that made this chair so incredibly comfortable in this world. The walk back was slightly chilly, but it didn't affect me too much. I got back to the homestead at 7: 30. Emily and Colin were in full swing feeding and watering the animals.

The rabbits hopped up to me and immediately started rubbing against my legs like cats who wanted attention. I bent down and gave them both some good scritches. They were purring within seconds. Colin walked up to me, holding up another fox head.

"John, look what they got again last night! These rabbits are amazing! They've already killed two foxes. It's too bad we can't figure out a way to train them not to eat them right away. If we could get the fox pelts first, they'd be worth some gold." I laughed and shook my head. It was still crazy to me we had carnivorous rabbits who kept our flocks safe from small predators.

Since I was still petting them, I looked at them seriously and said, "Spot, Buck, I need you two to stop eating the foxes until we can skin them for their pelts. I promise you we will give you all the meat back." Colin snort-laughed and said, "John, they're not smart enough to understand you, even if they are pretty smart for Dwarven Rabbits." I was still smiling as I said, "You never know. This place is magical, maybe they'll become Herd Leaders!" Colin looked at me in the earnest way only youth possess.

"No, they have to be born as herd leaders to be herd leaders. You'd be able to see on their ID tags." I patted him on the back, then walked towards where Emily was standing. She had been looking at us expectantly.

"I'm just joking, Colin, it looks like your mother wants us though." I recovered smoothly from that one! He smiled sheepishly, then followed me. Emily was standing at the corner of the goat pen. When we got to her, she smiled, pursed her lips, and said, "It is time to let the goats out. I fed the pigs some more mash already, so we will let them out this afternoon. If you and Colin can separate the corner logs so the fence is still sturdy, we can just leave it open. I will be keeping an eye on them all day.

I will watch the pigs too once we let them out. It really is too bad we do not have a Rancher subclass between the three of us." Colin looked at the ground and scuffed the toe of his boot into the roots of the grass.

"If I get the Homesteader class like I should, I'll take the Rancher subclass." Emily had expressed some worry about Colin actually getting the class since they didn't have a homestead of their own, but there was still a good chance he would. Some other people whose parents had died still received the class. But if he did, then he obviously was best suited to the Woodsman subclass. He would probably even be over level 5 already. Emily spoke up, but I cut her off with a raised hand.

"No, Colin, if you get the Homesteader class, you're choosing Woodsman. It's what you would want to choose, and you know it. Your hunting skills will be helpful, those salted barrels of elk in the ground over there can attest to that. And quit kicking the ground! I already told you I'm not buying you new boots." Emily laughed at that and said, "Yes, Colin, that is a terrible habit. I am not sure why you picked it up. I have told you repeatedly that it is unacceptable."

Colin stopped mid-kick, but he still put his head down so his long, unbound hair covered his face. He responded in a sullen tone, "Yes, Mother, yes, John."

"Good," Emily said.

"Now John, if you could open this fence, we shall let the goats out to graze. After that, I will make breakfast if you and Colin will finish feeding and filling up the water troughs." I nodded, and Colin and I worked on opening up the northwest corner of the fence so it didn't affect the pigs' pen. It was still strange to me to let the animals just free roam. We had never let our pigs out of their pen on Earth. We had a few goats at home, but they were out in a large pasture area with a few fat old horses.

In the winter, they got hay. The rest of the year, the pasture they were in was large enough that they never needed to be moved around. From what I'd read about domesticated animals in my almanac, as long as there was food on my property, they should feel a small compulsion to stay on the homestead. A strong-willed individual could break that compulsion and leave, but they could never get into a plot designated as a field. I didn't understand why the same compulsion wouldn't keep them out of the garden.

Maybe the food was just too irresistible to them? The almanac hadn't said, and I didn't want to ask Emily or Colin. My fencing around the garden seemed pretty solid, so I hoped they wouldn't get into it. The Rancher subclass could give you more control over your animals' actions, but none of us would have that subclass. We would just have to hope we didn't have a real jerk of a billy goat who was super strong-willed. He'd already be pissed he wouldn't be breeding the females.

The smell of goat droppings, wood, and the pigs all mingled to smell like a barnyard. Some people might consider that an unpleasant smell, but to me it just smelled like home. As we worked on the fence, the goats crowded around us, their curiosity clear. I couldn't help but laugh as we worked. I kept having to shoo the billy back because he kept trying to jump up on the logs to get a closer look at our work. What should have been a five minute job ended up taking us fifteen minutes to get it open about halfway.

At that point, the billy jumped the fence, and the does followed him over. All three of us laughed at that. It made removing the remaining rails a whole lot easier without their interference. Colin and I then watered the animals while Emily kept watch on the goats. They pranced and kicked and just had a great time. Goats in this world were clearly the same as goats on Earth, aside from being big and scary with their four horns. I'd have to name them at some point.

When I gave Emily and Colin my suggestion that we name the billy goat Horny, obviously, only because of him having four horns, Emily looked appalled. She flat-out told me she would name them herself sometime soon. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. After the goats settled down and were happily grazing around the cabin, Emily said she was going to go in and make breakfast. That sounded wonderful to me.

Colin and I worked on small things in the meantime. Once we had a breakfast of fried fish, eggs, and some of yesterday's bread, all fried in bacon grease, I handed Colin the old, no longer enchanted shovel, and grabbed the new one for myself. Colin sighed deeply, but followed me to the field where I assessed the situation. The furrow that was left on the edge of my field from plowing was eight inches deep. I had gone a little wider than needed so that the ground to the inside would be easier to dig into.

I hadn't dug a ditch in twenty years, at least. At home we had pivots on most fields, so no ditches at all. The only ditch I'd ever actually had to dig fully by hand was in a pasture where a tractor was impractical to get to. It had taken my brothers and me a solid week to dig around a thousand feet of ditch. I wasn't sure what the expected length we were supposed to accomplish in a day would be, but I was hoping for at least a hundred feet. At that rate, it would take us a week to dig everything I wanted.

I started off by showing Colin how deep I wanted the ditch. We would dig eighteen inches deep and about three feet wide at the top, tapering towards two feet wide at the bottom. I had him put the extra dirt on each side to raise the level above the ground. I would either just cut holes in the dirt, or make wooden boxes to control the flow of water in those spaces.

It wasn't practical to make notches every eighteen inches, so I would place one box for every three rows, then dig spots in the furrows so water could move into all three. I had used this same method at home a fair amount when I'd been younger, before all the pivots had been put in. I started by digging west towards the river. I would need to figure out some way to force river flow into the ditch I'd made once I got there. I found myself absolutely moving once I got into the proper flow of things.

The enchanted shovel dug into the soil much more easily than I'd expected. I gave Colin the section that I'd plowed for a couple of reasons. First, the plowing had already broken up the grassland. It took a lot of effort to cut through the carpet-like mat of roots from the grasses. Second, he really only needed to cut and move another foot of depth and two feet of width, with the furrow already being there to give him a straight line with a ditch already started.

I found that with my extra strength and the unnatural sharpness of this shovel, I had no trouble cutting into the mat of roots. By putting my boot on the lip at the top of the head of the shovel, I could push the blade into the soil with far more ease than I had expected. I moved fast enough that I changed my original, super-simple plan. I wanted the ditch to be three feet wide at the top.

So I made cuts thirty-six inches apart on each side, in an unbroken line, and then another one right in the middle at eighteen inches. I could then tear the grass, along with a good deal of the roots, out in long, unbroken strips that I set upright, off to the side for now. Once I dug the rest of the dirt out of the hole, I placed the strips of grass on top of the loose soil. Hopefully, the roots would dig in once again and provide a much more stable ditch in this area. This was common in pastures at home.

Cows or horses got more grazing space, and they were less likely to tear up the ditch banks with the roots of the grass holding everything together. Aside from a lunch break of more chicken and vegetable soup, I worked all day with minimal breaks. Colin's back was already hurting him by the time we took our lunch break. Then the break caused his back to stiffen up, so he got little more done after lunch. Around 3 p. m., I sent him off to help his mother with whatever chores she had for him.

He had dug a respectable fifty feet of ditch, more or less to the specifications I had asked of him. It was his first try, and he didn't have my extra strength or stamina, so I was happy with his effort. I also only got fifty feet fully dug, but I also got the turf cut along the entire length between the field and the river. The next day I would get the rest of the length cut, leaving only about ten feet between the ditch and the river.

Even with the river being pretty close to ground level, it was still two feet lower than the ground where the ditch was, so the river water wouldn't come into the ditch when it was running at normal flow. That meant I was going to have to engineer a stop that would cause water to flow into the ditch. That should be easy enough. I'd throw some large rocks, or a boulder or two, and make a mini dam to divert water towards the ditch.

I would also make a water box to fit in the ditch to stop water from coming in when I didn't want it to. Based on my current estimates, it would take me a week on my own to cut this stretch of ditch using this method, then a second week to get it the rest of the way to the southern field. If Colin was adding fifty more feet a day, that would help, but not as much as I felt he could help if we went and got those logs needed to build my cabin, then I had him prep the trees.

With an enchanted saw, he could cut all the branches off of the limbs, and even do some of the notching for the logs while I got the ditch dug. We had dinner, and then Colin and I went and took frigid baths in the river. Colin wasn't a huge fan of the idea. He insisted he could wait until bath day, which was still three days away. I had to admit that my measure of cleanliness was probably too strict. I had always been a shower-a-day guy, no matter what. But damnit, when we were sweaty, we were going to bathe!

I went with the river, as opposed to using well water and a bucket, because I didn't want to deal with being naked near Emily. She was out walking around with the pigs, whom we had let out on our lunch break. Colin said it wouldn't be a big deal if we just stripped down to our underwear, but I felt uncomfortable with that idea. The well water wasn't any warmer than the river, so it wasn't a worse choice as far as temperature went.

The pigs and goats ignored each other, and they made no attempts on the garden all day, so we considered that a success. With the help of the two rabbits, who were still suspiciously helpful, we easily rounded up the pigs and goats just before dark. We put them in their pens, and Colin and I closed them back up. I would need to build a proper gate sometime. Yet another thing to add to my list of things to do. There was always more to do on a homestead.

All one could do was take things a day at a time and get as much done as possible. Post-bath time, Emily offered to wash all of my dirty clothes the next day. I felt slightly bad about having her clean my dirty underwear, but she assured me it normally would fall under the terms of her contract, so it wasn't weird. I had kind of forgotten about the contract. The Farm Mistress contract she'd signed had made her a domestic worker. It really was her job to wash clothes, so I felt less weird after she mentioned that.

I walked back to my tractor just as the sun dropped below the horizon, exhausted but feeling good about my day. I had done some solid work.

Cotton is a tightly controlled material grown exclusively by the gnomes of northern Gnimafar. They have controlled the arable lands of that hot continent ever since humans have been free of their bonds. As they have always been more technologically advanced than humans, it was determined from our first meeting that it would be unwise to attempt a conquest of their lands. As such, cotton can be very expensive to acquire. Wool is the primary material for outer clothing in human lands.

There is a large homespun industry that thrives in Albion proper. People then turn that material into cloth, and the end consumer will later make clothing. Linen is often used to make underclothes. Researchers have shown that flax grows very well in the Western Territories. Recently, the Crown has made it a subsidy crop to grow for seed to ship to other colonies, where processing facilities are more readily available. Excerpt from Textiles of the Anglican Empire, by the Royal Research Academy. (Multiple Authors).

This book is available on the Guild Trade Store.